Protected Areas, Food Security, & Trade-Offs

Protecting habitats is essential to the preservation of species and as such, conservationists stress the importance of not only maintaining, but expanding, what are known as protected areas. However, at the same time, there is an increasing demand for food production. As cropland is responsible for widespread habitat loss, this presents an increasingly urgent issue, especially in areas with both high biodiversity and high food insecurity. To address this problem, Dr. Varsha Vijay, who is a former SESYNC postdoctoral fellow, and her colleagues published a paper in which they established a baseline estimate of where and why cropland occurs inside of protected areas globally. Join us as we discuss their findings and how they envision this new information can be used to help ensure the long-term efficacy of protected areas in meeting both ecological and socio-economic goals of conservation. 

See the full transcript here: https://www.sesync.org/full-transcript-%E2%80%93-interview-preserving-species-by-protecting-habitats-with-dr-varsha-vijay

Check out Varsha's work here: https://www.varshavijay.com. 

Learn more about SESYNC here: https://www.sesync.org. 

Developmental editing assistance by Christine Maietta.